A Secure Job

As attacks increase, U.S. struggles to recruit computer security experts raises an intriguing career possibility for engineers with a solid grounding in computers and networking. I wonder what's required to become a bona fide security specialist?

I'd like to to wish you all very happy holidays, however and wherever you celebrate them. With the recovering economy, may we all have a happy and prosperous 2010.

CS Gravitas

It's hard to imagine greater evidence of a tremendous impact on computer science than authoring the most cited paper in all of computer science as well as in EDA. Remarkable! Before you follow the links, can you guess the subject of the paper?

Find the answer in Gabe Moretti's Kaufman Award Dinner Notes. Good links and amusing pictures are in the coverage at SCD Source. And to delve deeper into the subject, see the Wikipedia article.

Building Blocks of EDA

Some of the unsung enablers of EDA innovation are the companies providing building blocks for common infrastructure tasks. Especially if you're a startup trying to bootstrap an innovative algorithm idea, it's crazy to develop yet another HDL parser or schematic viewer. I was reminded of these products as I read the latest press release from Verific Design Automation, which produces rock-solid HDL front ends for a number of commercial and in-house EDA tools.

The original player in this market was Interra Systems. A great schematic front end is GateVision, available from Concept Engineering. Are there any other major infrastructure providers I've overlooked?